A recently discovered archaeological site in Ireland is “hugely significant” and likely “unique to Ireland.”
Twenty-five years ago, John McCullen was working the land at his farm in Beamore, County Meath, when a window fell from one of the ruins that dotted his property. He
climbed up the ruin to put it back and noticed a few unusual things: one of the building materials was red sandstone, which isn’t available locally, and there were pigeon boxes, which had been used by people in the 16th and 17th centuries.
As a recent Irish Times profile details, he’d long heard stories about a Georgian landlord, a linen mill, and a monastery dating back centuries earlier. But what was the real history
of his family’s land?
With the help of archaeologists Matthew and Geraldine Stout, he secured a €50,000 grant
from the FBD Farm Trush, to be distributed over the course of three years – provided the
first month of excavation proved that the site was of significant interest.  McCullen can now rest assured that his land is of archaeological and historical
importance.

NAPLES, ITALY- The Independent Recording a  fresco that graphically depicts the impending combat victory of one gladiator over another has been uncovered in Pompeii’s Regio v. The victor, identified as a murmillo-type gladiator by his weapons and armor, stands over a cowering foe equipped in the Thracian manner. The latter has sustained deep gashes to the wrist, legs, and chest, and is holding up a finger to beg for mercy. The fresco, which measures roughly four feet by five feet, was found in what appears to have been a basement tavern or store. The floor above may have housed the proprietors or been used as a brothel. Massimo Osanna, superintendent for Pompeii, says it is very likely the establishment was frequented by gladiators, whose barracks were not far from the site.

According to a report in The Scotsman , a team of researchers under the direction of archaeologist Warren Bailie of GUARD Archaeology have returned to the site of the Wilkhouse, an eighteenth-century public house in the Scottish Highlands that served
farmers who were walking with their livestock to market. Coins uncovered at the site suggest the drove road that passed the pub had been in use since the late sixteenth century. Bailie said the pub’s double chimneys, slate roof, and lime-washed walls reflected the “modernity and affluence” that had been growing in the region in the mid-seventeenth century, since drovers’ inns were usually drystone structures with wooden shutters, low walls, central hearths, and thatched roofs. The excavation revealed the remains of meals of rabbit, birds, fish, and whelks, and shards of drinking glasses. An inverted cross found on a hearth stone may have been intended to keep witches from flying down the chimney, Bailie added. The pub fell out of use by 1819, however, due to the Highland Clearances, in which landowners evicted their tenants in order to enclose their fields for more profitable large-scale sheep herding

The lion and the bull have been fighting, locked in stone, for nearly 2,500 years—ever since an ancient sculptor carved them into a slab of black limestone and set them into a
monumental staircase at Persepolis, the royal center of the great Achaemenid Empire. The two animals were meant to reflect the prestige of this vast Persian empire, which fell in 330 B.C. when Alexander the Great sacked and burned Persepolis and its opulent palaces. The giant stone relief remained there among the ruins until 1931, when the University of Chicago’s Oriental Institute began a landmark excavation of the site—and gave the lion and bull a second life.
For the past 80 years, the 4,000-pound stone relief was on loan to the Boston Museum of
Fine Arts. But it has returned to the University of Chicago in honor of the OI’s 100th anniversary as one of the world’s foremost research centers on the civilizations of the
ancient Middle East. The rare artifact is available for public viewing at the Oriental
Institute Museum starting on September 28th, when the OI will host a public celebration—the first in a yearlong series of centennial events open to the University community and the general public.
Prof. Christopher Woods, director of the OI, discusses excavation work done in
Persepolis and the significance of the ancient relief.
Video by UChicago Creative
“We are thrilled to have this magnificent relief back in Chicago to help celebrate the OI’s
century of transformative research on the ancient Middle East,” said Christopher Woods,
director of the OI and the John A. Wilson Professor of Sumerology. “The beauty and
majesty of the relief just leaps out at you.”
The relief dates to about the fourth century B.C., when Persepolis stood as the ceremonial
center of the Achaemenid Empire, which spanned much of the ancient Middle East.
“Looking at this monumental imagery gives you insights into the imperial ideology—how the Achaemenid kings conceived of themselves and the identity they wanted to project,” said Woods, a leading scholar of Sumerian language and writing.
“The image of a lion and bull in combat has a long tradition in the ancient Middle East,
stretching back thousands of years,” said Jean M. Evans, chief curator and deputy
director of the OI Museum. “In the relief, these noble and powerful animals are
marshalled to reflect the power and prestige of the empire.” The 4,000-pound stone relief was recently returned to the OI for public viewing.
Photo by Jean Lachat

Rising to power in approximately 550 B.C., the Achaemenid Empire was the largest
empire the world had known; its extensive central administration set the model for later
empires and is an essential piece of understanding the journey of human civilization. But
after just two centuries, Persepolis—and the empire—fell when Alexander the Great’s
armies sacked the city in 330 B.C.
According to Roman historian Plutarch, it took 20,000 mules and 5,000 camels to carry
away the treasure Alexander’s army looted from Persepolis. Left behind, however, were
columns and halls, staircases and gates—all finely carved by the craftsmen of the
Achaemenid royal court.
Many of these were still standing two millennia later, when the OI began a pioneering
excavation that spanned eight years and required hundreds of workmen. Over the multi-
acre site, the excavation uncovered everything from the kings’ cups and bowls to the
treasures looted during the Achaemenid conquests of other kingdoms.
“The beauty and majesty of the relief just leaps out at you.”
—Prof. Christopher Woods, director of the OI
Hundreds of cuneiform tablets, preserved by their baking in the fires that consumed the
rest of the city, filled out the details of life in ancient Persepolis. From them, scholars
learned everything from land deals and taxes to how much haoma, the sacred intoxicating
drink, should be used during religious services.
While much of what was excavated remains on site at Persepolis, several large pieces,
such as the head of a colossal bull that once guarded the Hundred-Columned Hall, in
addition to smaller finds, were given to the OI by Iranian authorities in recognition of the
work that went into uncovering and preserving the ancient site and were shipped to
Chicago, where they have been on display at the OI Museum for nearly a century. The
relief of a lion and bull in combat, however, went on long-term loan to Boston Museum
of Fine Arts. In honor of the OI’s centennial, the Museum made plans to bring the stone relief back to Chicago.

According sofiaglobe archaeologists have found a bronze statuette of a ram’s head, said to date from the sixth century BCE, on St Cyricus Island off the coast of the town of
Sozopol on Bulgaria’s Black Sea coast. The statuette, the only one of its kind found there to date, was brought by the founders of Apollonia, the ancient name of Sozopol, according to a report by Bulgarian National Television.
Archaeologists have reached a layer that dates from the time of the first Apollonians. The
town was founded in the seventh century BCE by Greek colonists from Miletus.
The head of the dig team, Associate Professor Krustina Panayotova of the National
Archaeological Institute at the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, said that the statuette was
found in a pit where ritual drinking vessels were found, evidence that the first generations
of Apollonians offered gifts to their gods at the spot.
Although Apollonia has been studied for many years in dozens of archaeological
expeditions, no bronze objects have been found so far. Bronze from later eras has not
been found, even though there were copper mines nearby, used by the first settlers, the
report said.
Panayotova said that bronze was a metal that was much used. It is believed that the statue of Apollo, which was 12 metres high and from which the town took its name, may have been smelted for use to make cannons in later centures.
She said that the ram was a sacrificial animal, offered as a gift to the gods. “It is quite
possible that the statuette was brought here from Miletus.”
Along with the bronze head, many drinking vessels and jars made of fine ceramics have
been found. Apart from the workmanshop, the wild goats painted on them accurately suggest the date, and the place where the first settlers came from, the report said.
Research fellow Professor Margarit Damyanov said that the artefact was northern Ionian.
There was also hand-made ceramics, characteristic of the Thracian style, he said.

“Although attracted by the copper mines and natural resources of the area, the first
settlers in Apollonia apparently worked and lived in harmony with the local Thracians,”
Damyanov said.

By Philippe Bohstrom
The Minoans and their capital Knossos weren’t incinerated by volcanic blast from Thera
or flattened by quake as thought, but tellingly: their writing system changed.
The mystery of what happened to the Minoan civilization has tormented archaeologists
for over a century, and the tale has now taken a new twist. Nothing happened to them, say
archaeologists who have been excavating the island of Crete for over thirty years.
This extraordinary people, who produced palatial architecture unparalleled in the Aegean
region at the time, were not immolated by the volcanic eruption of Thera as once thought,
crushed by earthquake , or squashed by Mycenaean Greece as more recently supposed.
Rather, the Minoans, who had for crushed by earthquake , or squashed by Mycenaean Greece as more recently supposed.
Rather, the Minoans, who had for centuries wielded influence throughout the Aegean, did
experience earthquakes that rattled them, were indeed badly weakened by the volcanic
blast from Thera on the nearby island of Santorini, and did experience the unamiable
attentions of the mainland Greeks.
But although the two cultures appear to have struggled, over time the elite elements of
both became virtually indistinguishable, after 1450 B.C.E., if not earlier. Minoan
influence as such would recede and the by-then-Mycenaeanised islanders would soldier
on until the great collapse of civilization around the Mediterranean Basin, around 1,200
B.C.E. It bears adding that archaeologists had once thought the Minoans must have “come from somewhere else” because of their advancement compared with the surroundings. But genetic analyses in 2017 concluded that both the Minoans and Mycenaeans descended from the stone-age farmers of western Anatolia and the Aegean, plus smidgens of heritage from the Caucasus and Iran. The two were very closely related.
Yet the destruction layers found in the main Minoan city of Knossos weren’t the result of
Theran ash raining down 3,600 years ago but may be debris from Minoan resistance to
Yet the destruction layers found in the main Minoan city of Knossos weren’t the result of
Theran ash raining down 3,600 years ago but may be debris from Minoan resistance to
Mycenaean incursions, or possibly from local rebellions between 1470 to 1450 B.C.E.,
sums up Colin Macdonald, an archaeologist with the British School in Athens.
By the way, the Minoans they didn’t call themselves “Minoans”. That is a latter-day
name awarded to the prehistoric island residents deriving from their legendary king
Minos.

https://www.haaretz.com/archaeology/.premium.MAGAZINE-ancient-tablets-may-
reveal-what-destroyed-minoan-civilization-1.7809371

On the occasion of the 74th session of the United Nations General Assembly which taken place in NYC, UNESCO participated in several events of the Climate Summit and highlighted the role of education, science and culture in providing
sustainable responses.

The UNESCO reported that the Director-General supported the call of six South American countries to conserve and protect the Amazon, the world’s first tropical forest, at a high-level meeting on tropical forests: “The notion of common property whose transmission to future generations has been at the very heart of the UNESCO World Heritage Convention since the 1970s and is illustrated in places such as the Amazon but also in the Great Barrier Reef, the African tropical forests and the marine heritage”. The Director-General has therefore called for a massive emergency and investment plan for the areas, which are in the most critical situations, all over the world, by calling for the introduction of global education into school curricula from kindergarten to university.

WCHV and partners have been focusing on education as a major pillar of our
activities since our inception. On our website we have continued to include posts
and articles on heritage education and what schools and communities can teach the
next generation. In addition, we have also created educational videos which we
continue to use as an educational tool.